


Every Time I Visit You, I Lose Another Piece of My Heart

by chronicAngel



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Hospitalization, Hospitals, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, technically, very slow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 10:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12386256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: She sits there, silent, arms crossed, expression stoic despite the combined terror and guilt that stirs deep in her stomach, and she doesn't say anything to the broken boy sitting in front of her. She supposes he's not really a boy anymore, though.An AU in which Josh survives and does not become a Wendigo.





	Every Time I Visit You, I Lose Another Piece of My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Updates on this will probably be in sparse clumps, whenever motivation hits me.

Sam uses her fingers to frantically brush the hair out of her eyes, nervously fidgeting with her fingers and avoiding the intense gaze of the receptionist behind the window in front of her. She can see her own reflection in the glass, her hair falling out of its messy ponytail and into her eyes, her blue jacket halfway unzipped to reveal a stupid t-shirt with a cartoon of a cat with some pun on it that makes her feel juvenile under the scrutinizing gaze of the large woman across from her. She stares at her hands where they rest in her lap rather than look at her mess of a reflection or the glare she can feel down to her bones.

Finally, after a full minute of silence as though the woman is expecting her to admit to a prank, an orderly with a kind face enters to room to guide her to her destination, making small talk that she doesn't process as she continues to fidget and fumble around. She gives up on the ponytail, tugging it out with only minimal traces of pain (especially, she thinks, compared to what she's been through). Eventually, she's left standing in front of a clean white door on the third floor, next to a man with a warm expression that she doesn't know as she talks herself up to visit one of the people that she knows best in her life, or at least, one of the people that she thought she knew best in her life, before the incident in the mountains the year before.

The man gives her a sympathetic look as he pushes the door open with an ominous creak that makes her shudder.

When she steps into the room, it's not what she expects.

The room is just as pristine as any other hospital room, but it's just that: a hospital room. It's not the stark white, padded walls and floor that she's used to seeing on TV, and she feels almost stupid for believing that it might have been, and when her eyes finally settle on him, he's not wearing a straitjacket like the psychopaths in cartoons or grinning maniacally like a villain from a Batman series. His eyes are downcast, and are marked distinctly by the same dark bags she knows she, too, brandishes. The last year has all felt like one awful, sleepless night, and she supposes that's why she's here, isn't it?

She sits on the bed tucked away into a corner, one of the only pieces of furniture in the empty, lonely little room, and she supposes it must be his as springs creak under her weight in what she mentally personifies as a groan of protest. The orderly lingers in the doorway; neither of them speaks, but she knows he's not the reason why as she stares at her feet, at the stark contrast of her sneakers against the floor.

She sits there, silent, arms crossed, expression stoic despite the combined terror and guilt that stirs deep in her stomach, and she doesn't say anything to the broken boy sitting in front of her. She supposes he's not really a boy anymore, though. _He's not the monster everyone thinks he is, either,_ she reminds herself.

Just like Hannah was, he's just a victim. Maybe not as explicitly, maybe they hadn't directly hurt him the way they had her (Sam didn't though, she reminds herself, she tried to stop them, tried to warn Hannah before it all happened), but he was a victim, too. He didn't lose his life that day, but he did lose two others. Two sisters.

She takes a deep breath and forces herself to look at him, really look at him rather than just look past him or through him like her brain was practically begging her to do. "Hi, Josh," she says eventually, chewing on her lip and having trouble maintaining her confidence in looking at him. She gives him a full two minutes to respond, then sighs, wondering if she should leave.

As she thinks it, he finally looks at her, and her heart seizes up. She thinks he's going to speak, even sees him open his mouth, but her chest tightens and she finds herself rushing to fill the air before he can say anything. "It's hard for me sometimes, you know?" He looks confused, and she realizes that no, of course he doesn't know, he's not in her head like she sometimes expects him to be, feels like he has been. "It's hard to separate the thirteen-year-old boy who used to chase his sisters and I around the yard with who you are now." She pauses, pursing her lips and reflecting. "And... sometimes it's hard to separate that from... from what happened last year."

_Last year._ Her breath almost hitches just at the mention.

Last year she went up to the woods where the year before that two of her best friends in the entire world went missing-- died, they _died,_ and it's hard not to think it was at least partially her fault-- with the very same group of friends who lead to that happening. It wasn't on purpose. She forces herself to remember that, just like she forces herself to remember that everything that happened out in the mountains last year was just as accidental as it was terrifying and _real._ Last year the one person she really felt could understand her feelings when it came to the loss of Hannah and Beth pulled a horrible prank on their whole social group that might have been funny if they didn't all almost die. _But he almost died too,_ she rationalizes, even as she realizes she's the only one in their social group making an effort to forgive him.

She shudders again, her breath shaking as she exhales, and she keeps her eyes on him even as they sting and beg to be dragged to the floor. "But I know that you're not... you're not that person." Her stomach clenches as she thinks about who _that person_ really is, if there's even an answer to that question. Her thumbs dance around each other as a way to get some of her anxiety out, since she can't stare at her feet like she normally would when she was particularly anxious, or even chew on her hair like she did when she was still in middle and elementary school. "You're sick, Josh. You should have..." She breathes, looking closely at his face. "You should have told someone. We could have... _I_ could have helped you. I would have helped you..." She doesn't know why this feels so personal.

"I know," he rasps, and he sounds like he hasn't used his voice in weeks or even months. This is the first time she's seen him in person since everything that happened. She's seen him on the news, in pictures during interviews with his parents and during the few pieces the police would allow about everything that happened at the Washington Estate, but she's been too-- she thinks the proper word is scared, really, to visit him. Not that something might happen, but because she's been scared to really face what happened back then.

"Did you ever talk to anyone about it?" Her gaze finally drops to the floor, determined to count every dust particle that she can't really see, all of her confidence having been leeched away the second that he actually spoke. She supposes it shouldn't be a surprise; she came here, rather stupidly, to talk to him, to finally open up about everything that happened because she knows what isolation is like. She remembers what it was like that night when she was wandering around the house in nothing but a towel, looking for where her stupid friends had hidden her clothes in some dumb prank before being chased around the house by a killer-- only it wasn't a killer. It was Josh, no matter what she had thought at the time. No matter how sure she was that if she slipped up, she would die that night. "Did... did Han and Beth even know before...?" She can't finish the sentence. Even after what is now two years, she can't talk so openly about their deaths.

She supposes that only one of them was dead though. Learning that the monsters from the sorts of horror movies Josh's dad produced were real was jarring enough, learning that one of them was her best friend was even worse, and then having that very same monster-- that very same friend-- try to kill her? It was hard to write all of it off, and she could safely say that the very same therapists that Josh was seeing weren't going out of business any time soon.

"They knew." His voice is so gruff, and that's a quality she once would have found attractive, but now just makes her wince with sympathy and the mental pain of a memory shared but viewed through such different eyes.

She stands, chest still tight and swallowing a dry mouth, and before she has time to think about what she's doing, she throws her arms around him. He seems so startled by the action, like he hasn't had any physical contact in weeks, and it makes her wonder if he's even had a visitor in the past months, if his parents have come to see him, if any of their other friends have come to share their sympathies, or if he's just been alone. It makes her shiver, and she finally pulls back, looking him in the face. "I'm sorry, Josh." She doesn't have time to say anything else before the orderly is pulling her away gently, and she supposes her time to visit him is up.

As she's being pulled toward the door, though, she continues to watch him, and sees the way he stares at her. It's like they're teenagers again. It's almost comforting.


End file.
